TSAVO, Kenya -- One night a century ago, a British army
civil engineer killed a lion, ending a nine-month reign of terror and
setting off wild jubilation by thousands of Indian railroad workers.

"They surrounded my eyrie (platform) and, to my amazement, prostrated
themselves on the ground, saluting me with cries of 'Mabarak! Mabarak!,
which I believe means blessed or savior," Col. P.J. Patterson wrote in
his 1907 best seller, "The Man-eaters of Tsavo."

Patterson shot the lion's mate a few weeks later.

The hunt for the lions was the subject of a recent Hollywood movie
starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer, "The Ghost and the Darkness."

Now researchers from Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, where
the preserved lions are on display, and from the National Museums of
Kenya and the Kenya Wildlife Service are planning a Man-eaters of Tsavo
museum.

The lions' bloody exploits made Tsavo, about 130 miles
from the port of Mombasa, a familiar name when Kenya was a British
colony.

David Western, director of the Wildlife Service, said
the Tsavo museum will house exhibits about lions and items from a cave
that Patterson dubbed the Lions' Den, because he found human bones
there.

"We want to use the man-eaters as a lure to get more
people interested in Tsavo," a 7,928-square-mile national park, Western
said.

The park, straddling the main Mombasa-Nairobi highway,
attracts fewer visitors than Kenya's other animal reserves, such as the
Masai Mara. That is because it is difficult for visitors to Tsavo to
see the "Big Five" -- elephant, lion, Cape buffalo, leopard and rhino
-- in a single outing.

When Patterson shot the lions
on Dec. 9 and 27, 1898, they had forced a three-week halt in the
construction of the railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria because the
3,000 workers were numb with fear.

"(The lions') methods became
so uncanny, and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of
success, that the workmen firmly believed they were not real animals at
all, but devils in lions' shape," Patterson wrote.

Twenty-eight
Indian workers were killed and eaten. Some accounts say at least 140
Africans living in the area were also killed.

Work on the
657-mile railway, carved through swamps, scrubland, savanna, forests
and mountains, was begun in 1895 and completed six years later. Because
Africans lacked the required skills, the construction company hired
workers from India, then also under British rule.

The two
museums and the Wildlife Service are looking for financing for the
Tsavo museum. It would be situated off the highway at Tsavo on a river
of the same name.

The Lions' Den, a short distance from the
road, was rediscovered last May by Thomas Gnoske and Julian Kerbish of
the Field Museum and Kenyan park rangers.

Some findings from the cave could be significant.

"Many of the well-known fossil sites that have yielded human remains in
Africa were found in caves," Kerbish said during a recent visit to the
area.

A major caravan route from the Indian Ocean coast to the
interior passed through Tsavo, and researchers hope the cave will yield
evidence of the nature of the trade, which included slaves.

"To
historically understand urban centers at the coast, one has to
understand their relationship with the interior," said Chapurukha M.
Kusimba, a Kenyan who is an assistant curator at the Field Museum.

Bella Ochola-Wilson, a Wildlife Service official, said visitors will be
escorted to the cave by armed rangers. Lions still roam in Tsavo.